Over the last several years as our enemies have become much better at defeating or spoofing individual sensor modalities, there has been an increasing move to the use of sensor suites for Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions. These integrated sensor suites are much harder to defeat by camouflage, concealment and deception (CC&D) techniques, or spoofing, and can provide considerably more information and actionable intelligence.
Clean Earth Technologies, LLC (CET) has already demonstrated state of the art Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) systems and innovative algorithms for enhanced detection and classification for such applications as human detection, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), tracking, recognition, counter terrorism, ISR, as well as for countering spoofing and CC&D techniques. A logical extension of this, especially for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ISR applications, is to combine the passive HSI with an active and all weather sensing modality such as Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR).
HYPERSAR camera
Phase I platform UAV surrogate:
Both SAR & HSI will image the
same strip on the ground
The HYPERSAR program therefore seeks to combine HSI and SAR for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications and in so doing obtain the operational advantages of improved target detection, recognition and reduced sensitivity to countermeasures for current core SAR missions, and the ability to undertake new missions to detect a much wider range of targets (e.g. IEDs, chemical or biological plumes) than was previously possible. These operational advantages primarily arise from the fact that the imaging modalities (HSI and SAR) depend on different physical mechanisms.
CET's HYPERSAR flight test in Baltimore, MD
CET's Team at HYPERSAR flight test in Baltimore, MD
From Left: Ron Ferrante, Lori Kohm, Paul Cannon, Don Voss, Jeff Hardy and Jasenka Benac
Aerial image from flight test in Baltimore, MD
A successful phase 1 program using a proof of concept COTS based HSI imager that had visible-near-infrared (VNIR) and short wave infrared (SWIR) sensors demonstrated the benefits of adding HSI to SAR. This demonstration occurred during a flight test in realistic environments that showed CET’s HSI sensors could detect a wide range of targets when the SAR could not, and was able to do so even when conventional broadband imagers and industry standard data processing approaches failed miserably.
Based on the successful phase 1, phase 2 of the program is underway that will culminate with an advanced technology demonstrator (ATD) in early calendar 09.
The HYPERSAR program is sponsored by the US Army Battle Command, Battle Lab Ft. Huachuca, AZ.
